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Canon DSLR Hack Allows It To Shoot RAW Video
When the Canon 50D DSLR camera was released back in 2008, it could take nice pictures, but it had no support for video recording. Now, through an enterprising hack by members of the Magic Lantern forums, the 50D can capture RAW video. From the article:
"The tech inside the 50D looks like it borrows a lot more from its higher-end siblings, like the 5D Mark II, and it’s possible we may actually get better RAW video quality out of the 50D than we do out of any of the non-CF Canon cameras. ... The camera doesn’t have playback or audio recording as it was never designed to shoot video, but this isn’t too different from the RAW recording on the other Canon DSLRs at the moment."
Most of these are probably sitting in closets or got recycled by now.
This isn't a disposable point and shoot, it's a $1400 dSLR discontinued less than 3 years ago, with a still competitive specification. I'd hazard a guess that most of them are still in active use. Also, from the article "The tech inside the 50D looks like it borrows a lot more from its higher-end siblings, like the 5D Mark II, and it's possible we may actually get better RAW video quality out of the 50D than we do out of any of the non-CF Canon cameras." ('non-CF' cameras would include the current 60D model and below).
Actually the sensors used in Canon and Nikon cameras are manufactured by Canon and Nikon on Canon and Nikon Lithographic processes, and are used exclusively in Canon and Nikon cameras. You can't buy the sensors for use in your own camera and what is available commercially is substantially inferior to those produced by Canon and Nikon (and Sony).
In fact there are cameras with free software firmware, including digital cinema cameras similar to what this hack does, however the quality of the sensors used in them is inferior, resulting in an inferior camera. Also Canon and Nikon DSLRs have extremely good opto-mechanical assemblies, which would be hard to match.
Nikon is a leader in precision engineering, they built one of the first ruling engines which is a pretty critical piece of precision machinery for bootstrapping photolithography as it is used to produce linear diffraction gratings which is critical to all photolithographic processes, additionally Canon and Nikon are two of the very few (I can also think of Minolta, Carl Zeiss, ASML and Applied Materials) companies worldwide that produce steppers which are used for patterning semiconductor wafers. The precision construction of lens and mirrors is the dominant limiting factor in geometry reductions in photolithography, so it follows that companies with a long history of making quality optical components and devices are also leaders in the field of photolithography. As I'm sure you are aware, this type of equipment and processing is extremely expensive (billions of dollars).
So nothing is stopping you, except billions of dollars of capital you don't have.